We’re pretty sure the most anticipated debut related to Native Americans this year is a much-delayed and much-less-snappily named release from the U.S. Census Bureau known as Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A.In higher education, that "less-than-educated guess" might be "to get on the preferential hiring list," and we'll get to that anon. When politicians and pundits as diverse as George Wallace and Joe Biden can point to the shameful treatment of the First Nations by the government in Washington, there might be a case for corrective policies, and we'll get to the abuses thereof anon. The "anon" will be the coda to a mini-dissertation that continues beyond the jump.
The report provides the most detailed data we’ve ever had on America’s racial and ethnic origins, including stunningly exhaustive data on nearly 1,200 tribes, native villages and other entities. We hoped it would shed light on one of the biggest mysteries in the 2020 Census: Why did the Native American population skyrocket by 85 percent over the past decade?
The number of Americans claiming Indigenous heritage jumped from 5.2 million in 2010 to 9.6 million in 2020, a stark increase that probably was not the result of good old-fashioned procreation. Native Americans had the lowest fertility rate of any group measured last year, roughly tied with Asian Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
We could make some less-than-educated guesses, informed by the observation that the rise was largest among Native Americans claiming a mixed heritage.
First, though, we dip into those additional boxes available to tick on the Census forms.
We noticed that Indigenous groups across the board were much more likely to be multiracial than other groups. We called Brookings Institution researcher Robert Maxim, a citizen of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe who studies Native American data issues. This, he explained, was the legacy of centuries of forced assimilation.The intermarriages took place long before Uncle Sugar got involved, but that lends itself neither to writing protest songs, to calling attention to similar practices in China, nor to the incentives to claim protected status.
From the 1870s until the 1960s, the federal government ran brutal boarding schools designed to assimilate Indigenous children. Then came the tribal-termination era of the 1950s and ’60s when the government encouraged Indigenous people to pack up and move to the city. Under the so-called Voluntary Relocation Program, Maxim told us, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs would terminate a tribe’s federal recognition, “divide up the reservation, sell it off to the settlers and give the tribal members a one-time cash payment and a one-way ticket to the city.” It broke Native social ties and led to more marriages to outsiders.
That heartbreaking history helps explain why Native Americans are more likely to have a mixed heritage. But it doesn’t explain the giant increase in numbers in recent years.
At this point, it’s worth noting that data about Native Americans is unusually hard to parse. Census relies on each person’s own assessment of tribal affiliation, rather than tribal enrollment, and counts many more tribes than have official federal recognition, resulting in a sometimes haphazard system that, as Maxim says, “leads to all sorts of wacky results.”Tribal enrollment is itself fraught, and that has played a role in those pretend claims of protected status. In the current Census reports, the largest First Nation cohort is Mesoamerican.
The second-biggest Native American origin in the United States is the Navajo Nation. But while it’s one of America’s top tribes by land area and enrollment, the Navajo population did not grow as rapidly in the 2020 Census as Native America writ large.Here, the self-reporting matters, a lot.
So we looked at the third-biggest group — and it’s a humdinger and a half. About 215,000 Americans claim to be exclusively “Cherokee.” And these generic “Cherokees” outnumber Census counts for all three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, none of which are included in the generic “Cherokee” total.
But the bit that really braised our brains is this: While the number of people claiming to be single-race Cherokee fell slightly in the 2020 Census, the number claiming to be at least part Cherokee skyrocketed from 770,000 to about 1.5 million.
That doubling dwarfs the increases of other native groups. It’s like we discovered an entire Alaska or North Dakota populated solely by newfound part-Cherokees. If we can pinpoint where they came from, we’ve probably solved this mystery.That's new. It has always been possible, however, to send a recipe to a compilation of tribal recipes on the strength of a family story.
We tracked down University of Minnesota sociologist Carolyn Liebler, an Indigenous demography expert who has repeatedly delved deep into the data to count the surprising numbers of Americans who embrace new racial identities from census to census. She thought she could finger the culprit.
“It’s definitely the Census Bureau,” she told us via email. Her research has shown that, yes, people are adopting Indigenous identities, and Indigenous people are immigrating to the United States. But that’s been the case for decades. This time, something’s different. And it’s got to be “very important changes in the race question and especially in the way they coded the responses that they received.”
As we’ve discussed previously, Census changed how it measured race in 2020. Unlike in 2010, the form provided a free-response line for all races. If you marked White or Black you were prompted to write a specific origin, such as Russian, Alsatian or Haitian. The bureau counted up to six responses and matched them, by hand if necessary, with their official origin list.
Many Americans with deep Indigenous backgrounds haven’t enrolled in federally recognized tribes. But it does mean the total of 9.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives includes people who did not check that box on the census.In ordinary life, and when it comes to yarning at the family reunion, or writing a genealogy for private use, there's nothing evil at work.
Still, the Census Bureau didn’t create this population of surprise Native Americans. It just revealed it with a change in methodology. And it raises another big question: Why are there so many Cherokees, out of all the possible American Indian identities?
The unsatisfying answer would be that a surprising number of White and Black Americans suffer from what has been uncharitably called “Cherokee Grandmother Syndrome,” the century-old proto-meme that a dimly recalled ancestor contributed “Cherokee blood.”
A more thoughtful answer requires a deeper understanding of Cherokee history. As a dominant tribe in the American Southeast, the matrilineal Cherokee used marriage as a tool to bring outsiders into their kinship system, said Virginia Commonwealth University’s Gregory Smithers. That spun a wide web of genetic ties, and may have led Whites to view the tribe as more similar to them in culture and appearance. As one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, they also thrived economically. Their elites often owned enslaved Africans, which created a basis for Black Americans to have Cherokee heritage as well.
The devastating relocations known as the Trail of Tears followed by a century-plus of disruptive federal policies spread them across the region. That history also led some White Southerners to embrace the Cherokee as fellow victims of federal overreach — though Smithers is quick to point out it was often those Southerners’ ancestors who led the calls for Cherokee removal in the first place.
Together, it all means that Cherokee origins were pervasive enough, and desirable enough, to be smoothly passed down in garbled family legends.
The adoption of a tenuous Indigenous heritage may be a sign that Americans are shying away from a White identity that has become an uncomfortable mark of privilege. But there’s a more charitable interpretation, too.In the academy, that political citizenship is critical. Recently, Margaret Noodin, holding the title of University Professor of Indian Studies at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, abdicated her post after her claims to Ojibwe (Chippewa, frequently claimed on Census filings from the shores of Gitchee Gumee) didn't stand up.
“Most race shifters see themselves not as White people who ‘play Indian,’” [Texas anthropologist Circe] Sturm wrote in The Conversation, “but as long-unrecognized American Indians who have been forced by historical circumstances to ‘play White.’”
To be fair, simple genetic math implies that Cherokee and other genes have probably spread far and wide through the population. Your number of potential ancestors doubles every generation, causing exponential growth. In 10 generations, or about 250 years, it tops 1,000. In 20, it tops a million. It doesn’t take long for our fast-expanding family trees to interlock.
Which helps explain why American Indians often point to concepts like tribal membership and kinship bonds — not the genetic links implied by measures of race — as the best markers of Native American identity.
“It’s why so many people insist that Native American identity is a question of political citizenship,” Maxim told us, “rather than race.”
Noodin, who earned $167,000 a year, faced accusations of deception and was even branded a 'con artist' after stepping down from her role as the director of the Electa Quinney Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee due to mounting suspicions regarding her claims of indigenous heritage.Just another day doing the diversity rain dance. Earlier this year, another scholar claiming Chippewa heritage got caught in a lie in Madison. "Kay LeClaire, a Wisconsin artist and activist accused of faking various Native American identities, resigned as the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s first ever community leader in residence at the School of Human Ecology and the Center for Design and Material Culture. Critics say LeClaire is white with no Native American ancestry." That article also noted, "Numerous other scholars identifying as Native American in their work at U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities have been exposed as having no such ancestry in recent years." Ms LeClaire's Act of Contrition, though, is in High Church of Intersectionality form.
Margaret Noodin's academic journey took a contentious turn when fellow academic Doug Kiel, who belongs to Wisconsin's Oneida Nation, exposed inconsistencies in her claims during an exhibition of indigenous art in Chicago.
Kiel's scrutiny of her 'rambling babble' in the positionality statement left no room for doubt. According to him, Noodin's justifications did not align with the accepted standards for establishing Native American heritage.
Noodin began her career as an Ojibwe language instructor in Michigan and was appointed to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2014.
However, her claims about Native American identity were questioned in 2021 on the New Age Fraud forum, leading her to report the allegations to the university administration the following year.
Throughout the controversy, she denied lying about her heritage, emphasizing that her belief in her indigenous background stemmed from her family's accounts. She candidly acknowledged her inability to pinpoint a specific tribal nation from which she descended.
LeClaire apologized in a separate statement to Madison365, saying, "What I can do now is offer change. Moving forward, my efforts will be towards reducing harm by following the directions provided by Native community members and community-specified proxies. Currently, this means that I am not using the Ojibwe name given to me and am removing myself from all community spaces, positions, projects, and grants and will not seek new ones. Any culturally related items I hold are being redistributed back in community, either to the original makers and gift-givers when possible or elsewhere as determined by community members."Today, an even more exotic legend came to light.
UW Madison said there “is a long and painful history of erasure and cultural appropriation in the U.S., which has had an immense impact on the lives of Indigenous people,” and these “latest allegations are a disturbing reminder of how this persists today.” LeClaire did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, a watchdog group that works "to cease the activities of individuals and organizations falsely representing themselves as American Indians at every opportunity," according to its website, says Qwo-Li Driskill (born Paul Edward Driskill), an associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies and queer studies at Oregon State University, has falsely claimed Cherokee, Lenape and Osage ancestry.If we take the rules of Woke Authenticity seriously, shouldn't we shame anyone who has no Native heritage as a cultural appropriator for claiming protected status as two spirit? (And what chance do we have of locking up psychos who are latent mass shooters when we're affirming all these pronoun and identity psychoses in institutions allegedly of higher learning?)
The group is calling for Oregon State to fire Driskill for academic fraud, or “at the very least” have Driskill issue a public acknowledgement that they are not in fact Native American and an apology for falsely claiming to be. (Driskill identifies as Two-Spirit Cherokee, which means they don’t identify solely as male or female.)
The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds exists to "cease the activities of individuals and organizations falsely representing themselves as American Indians at every opportunity." Those family legends, whether hinted at in Census or church records or shared at the reunion? R-E-L-A-X. "We do not focus on the millions of individuals who believe they have American Indian ancestry based on unfounded family lore when they do not." In contemporary higher education, apparently there's status to be gained in a claimed legacy of oppression.
In many cases the professors have benefited professionally from their dishonesty and written influential essays and books, taught specialized courses, and even led academic initiatives and research projects based on their supposed expertise and lived experience as Indigenous people steeped in Native American culture and history.There's something in Tribal Alliance advocacy that strikes me as germane to male-to-female swimmers and runners.
Professors at other institutions have also been outed by colleagues and others for falsely claiming to be Black or LatinX.
TAAF formed a little more than a year ago to investigate alleged pretendians.This post is already too long. I'll wrap up with a focus on the effect of such fakery on the performing arts, or on scholarship. Years ago, when the protected status fakery surfaced in Colorado, I wrote, "Pirate Ballerina has been following the [Ward] Churchill story aggressively, most recently offering an Out-of-Context, Nonviolent Churchill Quote of the Day, most of which suggest Mr Churchill is at best a fourth-rate, fourth derivative Barrington Moore, Jr. but who takes his research inspiration from Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'My Country Tis of Thy People You're Dying.'" And now, dear reader, Buffy Sainte-Marie turns out to have been playing at First Nation long ago.
“It started because a bunch of us got really frustrated and sick and tired of all the fraud,” said Lianna Costantino, director of TAAF and member of the Cherokee Nation. Pretendians are “the last nail in the coffin of the genocide of the American Indian people because they are erasing us by replacing us. They take up space, they usurp our voices, they usurp our access and opportunities.”
Folksinger Buffy Sainte-Marie got her start in the Greenwich Village scene and during the 1960s became an indigenous icon. In 1975 she showed up on “Sesame Street” proclaiming, “We want kids to understand that Indians exist. We really are real.” And as Buffy explained, “Cree Indians are my tribe, and we live in Canada.” That nation showered Sainte-Marie with awards, made her a companion of the Order of Canada, and even put her on a postage stamp.I think back to that ere, high school for me, and suspect that her message might have resonated with the kind of Summer-of-Love-but-not-Helter-Skelter Concerned Type who was common in those days, whether she presented as Cree or not. Lloyd Billingsley might quip, "Buffy is no Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, or Judy Collins, and that might be too kind," and yet, those Summer of Love types would take another toke and mutter "heavy, sister" all the same. There's also an answer to his exit question. "Exit question: In a regime supposedly dominated by 'white supremacy,' why do so many people want to claim minority identity?" Follow. The. Money. The institutions of higher education, and the poobahs of entertainment, are so keen to establish their antiracist street cred that they'll pay a premium. As Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan notes, "I’m convinced (having followed the subject) that it’s 90% cynical self-advancement."
Fair enough, and yet, might too strict an identitarian stance be destructive to scholarship? We'll return to Milwaukee, where Margaret Noodin worked on conserving the Ojibwe language.
Antonio Doxtator, a two-time UWM graduate who took two of her Ojibwe language classes, was stunned to read her statement. To him, it was confirmation Noodin had little, if any, Indigenous ancestry.She might have had 167,000 reasons to present herself as Chippewa. OK, that's a lot less than what you can get being manager of the Chicago Cubs, but it can still buy a lot of Spanferkl at the Oktoberfest. And if the inclusive symbolism is more important than the intellectual substance, is the understanding of Ojibwe language and literature thereby expanded less?
“I felt betrayed,” said Doxtator, an Oneida Nation citizen. “I never would have taken her classes if I’d known she wasn’t Native.”
Two other former students who are tribal members described feeling uncomfortable in classes or avoiding campus events because of their suspicions, even before 2021, that Noodin was not Native. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from Noodin or her supporters.
Some of Noodin's former colleagues, like University of Michigan instructor Howard Kimewon, felt similarly betrayed. The two taught Ojibwe language classes together in Michigan.
Kimewon told the Journal Sentinel he felt like Noodin took advantage of him and used him for his knowledge of Ojibwe, his first language, to publish books together and further her career. He said he doesn’t believe Noodin is helping people, going so far as to call her a “con artist.”
Martina Osawamick, of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation in Ontario, worked with Noodin at a nonprofit for preserving the nation's languages and culture. She said Noodin implied she was Native and was “appalled” to learn Noodin hadn’t been forthcoming about her identity.
“It’s absolutely not right for people to be doing this,” she said. “It’s disturbing.”
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